david_schilling___chicago_ Posted March 10, 2006 Share Posted March 10, 2006 I recall hearing on several occassions that if someone really wants to pirate the images off of a protected DVD that there is a way for the computer savy people to do it. But I'm wondering just how savy someone would have to be and how many people really have the skill to do it? I'm also wondering if this could be a cyber-urban myth? How about the password protected PDF files that we can automate out of photoshop? I'm well aware of the screen capture method but several programs won't allow you to toggle back and forth to carry-out a screen capture. I also can't think of any kind of quality with the "take a photo of the screen" method. I'm not looking to go out and pirate images, just curious as to how it would be done and wondering how safe my images actually are. Seems to me that we've got a few computer savy folks cruising the forum........... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
david_moore13 Posted March 10, 2006 Share Posted March 10, 2006 I use Linux, and generally all the DVD playing software for Linux allows you to take a screen capture of a playing DVD. I imagine some of the Windows software allows it too. The less mainstream the software, the greater the chance that it allows you to take a screen capture. That being said, I wouldn't lose sleep over the issue. A DVD has a resolution of approximately 640x480 which when printed, would be very coarse. A technical person who knew how to copy would also know how bad 640x480 would look when printed. You could get similar (poor) results piecing together thumbnails from Pictage, etc. and I haven't really heard of people doing that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kari douma Posted March 10, 2006 Share Posted March 10, 2006 I have come to the conclusion that if someone wants to copy your images bad enough, they will find a way. They would have to be VERY techincle savy to get them from the DVD or the Online proofing galleries. Those are usually lower rez files anyway, so they wouldn't be able to print too well. In portrait work, everyone is always saying not to let the customer have the proofs, because they will scan them. Well, if they are really that dishonest, they will do it anyway. They could just buy one 5X7 and scan it, printing a bunch. So, I feel if they are going to do it, they will find a way. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
larry schaefer - chicago, Posted March 10, 2006 Share Posted March 10, 2006 Dave You might get a better idea of what can be broken or hacked by going to a place that sells software and look at the DVD Copying titles. Many of them tell you what can be copied in the way of file types and formats. Perhaps this can shed some light on what you need to look out for. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
austinphoto Posted March 10, 2006 Share Posted March 10, 2006 I use pic to exe. It creates a one file slide show that cannot be broken down into individual jpg images, and thus cannot be printed or copied. The slide show itself, can be copied. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
david_schilling___chicago_ Posted March 10, 2006 Author Share Posted March 10, 2006 I appreciate all the comments. Believe me, I'm not losing any sleep worrying about people swiping the images. In fact, I'm finishing up a DVD of a recent wedding now and I hope they copy the heck out of it and pass it around to all thier friends. What a marketing opportunity. Around here the only pirates that I worry about are Steve Goodman's "Lincoln Park Pirates". :-) I am familiar with screen capture, and I realize that the entire DVD can be copied. What I'm really wondering about is the statement that the system can be "hacked" and the indivual image files can be had. Is this true? How? Specifically, how do you hack the DVD and how could you hack the PS PDF presentation files that are password protected? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chris_leck Posted March 10, 2006 Share Posted March 10, 2006 "...If someone really wants to pirate the images off of a protected DVD that there is a way for the computer savy people to do it." Probably so. It depends on what you mean by a protected DVD. Protected how? Regardless, there's probably more than one way. "...How could you hack the PS PDF presentation files that are password protected?" Sometimes, security measures are designed with tunnel vision. This may result in keeping the rocket scientists out, but not the five-year-olds. A friend with a Mac claims that Macs (or at least his Macs) don't pay attention to PDF security, they just open the files. I have not verified this, so you might take it as hearsay. Regarding quality, some are oblivious to quality. I've seen people print screen captures and worse, and be happy that they got them for free. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
larry schaefer - chicago, Posted March 11, 2006 Share Posted March 11, 2006 I dont believe you have to be so savy. DVD copying software is abundant and many versions are extremely versatile and can get you down to the files. That was the point of my previous post in this thread. Is there that much wedding image piracy out there anyway? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
david_schilling___chicago_ Posted March 11, 2006 Author Share Posted March 11, 2006 Where are the true Geeks? This is my point exactly.......I know about screen capture and I know about copying the whole DVD. It sounds completely believable to me that a true computer savy geek could get to those individual files....that's what I've heard in the past, but now I'm not so sure. I'm guessing some pretty computer savy people have seen this thread but still no info on the actual hacking "how to". The automated PDF presentation file from PS CS and CS2 is pretty widely used and can be encrypted with a password.....other than finding a way to obtain the password, is there a way to hack it? How? I think it's time to send off an email to Scott Kelby. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
david_moore13 Posted March 11, 2006 Share Posted March 11, 2006 If by "individual files" you mean the original, high-resolution images from your camera, then no, it's just not possible to get them off a video DVD. The reason is that they were never put on the DVD in the first place. The video itself has a resolution of 720x480 or 640x480, and that is as high resolution as it gets. The program you use to create the slideshow will not store the original files on the DVD. On the other hand, if you, as the photographer, wanted to put high resolution copies of the images on the DVD, you could do it -- but then the DVD could not be played on a TV, it would have to be used from a computer. As for PDFs, I've never tried to extract images from a PDF before, but I'm sure it's not very hard. There are freely available PDF viewers not made by Adobe, and I believe most of these viewers do not enforce the copy protection. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
eric merrill Posted March 11, 2006 Share Posted March 11, 2006 David: I'm not sure what answer you're looking for. If it can be displayed on the screen, it can be captured. It's really that simple. If your photo is displayed on a screen, then it cannot be secured. Period. Eric Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bob_hope5 Posted May 25, 2007 Share Posted May 25, 2007 Just FYI, it's not that hard to break apart a PicturesToExe file. While it's a great way to distribute your work in general, a partially trained monkey can extract the pictures to individual files. Just my two cents. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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